For most SMBs, budgeting takes weeks and relies on some version of "last year +/- 5%" and it is outdated by March. It doesn't have to be that way this year! Let's look at a hypothetical company - Blueberry. Let's say they have the following systems - 1. QuickBooks 2. Bank of America for banking 3. A payroll provider 4. Sales pipeline in Excel Their usual budgeting process looks like - 1. Export of 2yrs of P&L 2. Clean them up in a spreadsheet 3. Plan headcount in another spreadsheet 4. Plan sales/revenue in another spreadsheet 5. Plan expenses 6. Estimate a reasonable escalation/de-escalation in OPEX and COGs 7. Tie everything together and hope it works out. You can become much more intentional this year and that's where AI can help. Build your baseline - Connect QB to Claude, so that it can automatically pull your historical information to build your baseline. Plan headcount - it can use your payroll information to help you plan headcount and accurately estimate for salary, payroll fees and taxes. Forecast revenue and expenses - look at real trends, identify business drivers and provide a basis for estimation. Your sales pipeline is another input to the revenue forecast. Cash forecast and What-Ifs - Run your what-ifs and see how that impacts cash and profitability Live Budget - This is the best part! What you have built now is a live budget, that can be imported to QB and can be used to monitor your Budget-to-Actuals every month. In my opinion, it is not about a faster budget cycle. It is about a living budget that can be used for monitoring and decision-making next year. I do recommend human checkpoints throughout the budgeting process, as well as proper protection for sensitive customer and payroll information. If you are thinking of using AI in your budgeting process this year, do reach out if you need someone to talk to!